The SWA investigation is a major international hardware collaboration,
led by the UCL/MSSL (Principal Investigator: Prof. Christopher J. Owen).
In addition to the overall leadership of the suite, UCL/MSSL will
provide the bulk of the hardware for the Electron Analyser System (EAS), one
of the 3 sensor systems within the suite. The Proton-Alpha Sensor and
the Heavy Ion Sensor are led by partners in France and the USA
respectively. The central data processing unit, to be built in Italy,
serves all three sensors and completes the suite.

EAS
will make a high temporal resolution determination of the 3D electron velocity
distributions in the solar wind, in order to be able to separate out the key
core, halo and strahl populations of electrons, and derive their moments
(density, temperature, bulk velocity, heat flux).It consists of two top-hat electrostatic analyser heads with an aperture
deflection system (ADS) and a novel variable geometric factor system (VGFS).
Orthogonal mounting of the 2 sensors and the ± 45° aperture deflection provides
an almost 4π steradian field-of-view required to fully measure the electron
velocity distribution functions and thereby provide moments (density,
temperature, velocity, pressure tensor, heat flux) and/or full electron pitch
angle distributions at all times.

Key
challenges include dealing with the radiation environment (150 krad over
mission lifetime), the thermal environment (nominal temperature in the
spacecraft shadow at the end of the boom is -180 °C, whereas a pointing failure
of the spacecraft may result in full Sun exposure at distances as close as 0.28
AU!), large dynamic range of electron fluxes over orbital range, and the
mechanical integrity of the sensor on the boom.

The Extreme
Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) is a fundamental component in the Solar Orbiter
mission profile and will contribute to the following outstanding Solar Orbiter
science themes:

• What
are the origins of the solar wind streams and the heliospheric magnetic field?

• What
are the sources, acceleration mechanisms, and transport processes of solar
energetic particles?

• How
do coronal mass ejections evolve in the inner heliosphere?

• Explore,
at all latitudes, the energetics, dynamics and fine-scale structure of the
Sun’s magnetised atmosphere.

The EUI
instrument suite is composed of two high resolution imagers (HRI; one at
Lyman-α, one at 174Å) and one dual band full-sun imager (FSI) working
alternatively at the 174 and 304 Å EUV passbands. It is the product of a multi-national
collaboration, including members from UK, Belgium, France, Germany,
Switzerland and Greece. MSSL is responsible for the
design, manufacture and delivery of the SO-EUI Common Electronics Box and
on-board flight software. It is also responsible for the development of
supporting EGSE/software.

MSSL is leading the team providing the Panoramic Stereo Cameras for ESA's Exomars Rover.

The Martian environment presents
the main technological challenges facing PanCam. Because the instrument is
mounted on the rover mast, it is exposed to the fine dust which settles from
the atmosphere and is exposed to a difficult thermal environment. Temperatures may fall as low as -120C,
depending on latitude and season, and there is, like on Earth, constant diurnal
cycling, with warmer temperatures during the day and colder temperatures at
night. Even at the equator the range is
quite extreme: perhaps as "warm" as 0C during the day, but falling to
-90C at night. The PanCam team need to
ensure that electronics and mechanical parts maintain reliable operation
throughout a lengthy mission.

Like the rest of the rover,
PanCam has planetary protection challenges, for example ensuring that we do not contaminate the
Martian surface, not only because we want to be good planetary neighbours, but
also so we do not affect the results of the biological and chemical analyses to
be performed on-board. Moreover, because
we are part of a sample return mission, it's important to not compromise the
pristine nature of the samples to be eventually returned to Earth.

As well as our programme of space projects, MSSL is also collaborating on
a high energy physics experiment called SuperNEMO. This experiment will search for
an extremely rare process called neutrinoless double beta decay (DBD) and
explore fundamental questions concerning the nature of neutrino mass.

SuperNEMO is the next generation of DBD detector and will
ultimately be sensitive enough to detect neutrino masses of about 0.5 eV.

MSSL is currently designing and constructing both the
tracker frame for the first Demonstrator Module and the automated wiring robot
that will be needed to wire the 2000 Geiger cells that will be placed inside
it. Once assembled and commissioned at MSSL, the tracker will be moved to an
underground laboratory in France and integrated with the rest of the module.

Euclid is a candidate mission in the ESA Cosmic Vision
programme. It has been under study for three years; selection of the successful
mission concepts will occur in late 2011, with launch dates in 2018 or 2019.
Euclid will map Dark Energy at high redshifts – current theories predict that
Dark Energy makes up the majority of the mass of the Universe.

MSSL is leading the development of the VIS instrument for
Euclid as head of an international consortium. VIS consists of a large area
array of 36 Charge Coupled Devices (CCDs) plus supporting electronics and
structure. At this phase of the project MSSL is responsible for definition of
the requirements on the instrument, its interfaces to the spacecraft and early
prototype work on key technology elements. If selected for flight, the next
phase will be to design and build the first version of VIS, building up the
manufacture and test of the final (so called flight model) in 2016.

Gaia is ESA’s mission to understand the formation, evolution
and current state of our Milky Way Galaxy. It does that in two ways. The first
is by measuring the star motions and positions. From these the gravitational
forces in the Galaxy can be calculated, and hence how both dark matter and
ordinary matter are distributed in it. This provides information on how the
Galaxy has been built up since the earliest times of the Universe from the
accretion of gas and smaller galaxies. The second way is by measuring the
characteristics of each star: its luminosity, temperature, density and chemical
composition. From this it is possible to trace how the generations of stars
have enriched the Galactic environment, and also enables a major step in our
understanding of the physical processes in the stars themselves.

Since 2001, MSSL-UCL has had a significant role in the Gaia
mission, centred on the Radial Velocity Spectrometer (RVS) instrument and on
the satellite’s main detector chain. The RVS will produce on average 40 spectra
per star for ~60 million stars to measure their motions in the line-of-sight
direction, and their characteristics. MSSL was contracted by ESA and the UK
research councils to develop the RVS concept, and to advise the industrial
contractor Astrium (now AirbusDS) on scientific matters. The Gaia focal plane
is the largest ever flown in space, and each CCD detector has dedicated
electronics to convert the low signal levels in the detectors to digital
images. MSSL, again through ESA and Astrium contracts, developed prototype
electronics and calibrated every CCD and detector electronics unit on Gaia.
MSSL has also developed much of the software to process the RVS data as part of
the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium (DPAC), established in scientific
institutes across Europe, to produce the public Gaia catalogues.

Gaia was successfully launched into space
from French Guiana on 19th December 2013 (see MSSL Astro Blog) and the spacecraft was commissioned from then until
July 2014. MSSL was a major part of the team commissioning RVS (see ESA
Gaia Blog). The nominal mission started on 25th July 2014
and it is planned that Gaia will continually scan the sky and return data from
the Sun-Earth Lagrange point (L2) for at least six years. Gaia data will be
released in a series of catalogues, with the first results planned for
mid-2016.